


you took my body home

by AndreaLyn



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 19:15:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17987039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: For Alex, dreaming about Michael Guerin isn't new, but when those dreams might not be his alone and offer them a map to a better future, they're nearly impossible to ignore.





	you took my body home

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Rolling Stone by Reuben and the Dark.

In the beginning, Alex didn’t think anything of it. 

Dreaming of Guerin is like breathing. You forget that you’re doing it until suddenly, you’re constantly aware of it. For years, he dreamt of him and forgot when it washed away in the morning, but ever since Alex came back to Roswell, he’s hyper-aware of the fact that he’s been dreaming about Guerin again.

So, when it becomes more frequent after he finds the strange artifact in the bunker, he doesn’t think anything of it. His father got in his head, but there had been small hints of truth in his warnings. Guerin was a criminal and Alex is on the opposite side of that. They can’t be together.

It didn’t matter how he made Alex feel.

Right?

Maybe that’s why he’s dreaming about him so much. It’s his way to process the fact that he’s cut Guerin out of his life for their own good. It’s the right thing to do, he tells himself over and over. Touching the strange artifact beside his bed, he lets himself fade into a heavy sleep. 

He already knows as soon as he starts dreaming, there Guerin will be, coaxing him home.

* * *

In the dream, he doesn’t have his leg back. 

That should have been his first hint that something might be awry. As much as he half-wishes he was his better self, he doesn’t think it’s odd. Maybe he’s come to terms with it, finally, instead of even thinking about the fact that this may not be _his_ dream. He’s in a kitchen he doesn’t recognize, and there are sounds coming from the kitchen, like pots and pans clinging together, fridges being slammed shut, and beer caps tumbling to the counter.

“I know what you’re going to say!” It’s Michael’s voice, accompanied by the sound of a knife working on a cutting board. “Beer is absolutely a breakfast choice if you have eggs with it.”

Alex shuffles towards the kitchen and leans against the doorway, stuck gaping at Michael Guerin in a kitchen wearing nothing but an apron that leaves him completely backless, chopping chives and making eggs, all while drinking a beer. 

_Criminal, no-good, gambling, drunk…_

His father’s mantra tries to weasel its way into his mind, but Alex feels dry-mouthed and short-breathed; seventeen again. At the same time, he feels older, settled, and he stubbornly reminds himself that his father doesn’t have control over him in his dreams. 

Still, that doesn’t mean Alex rolls with it right away. “What are you doing here?”

Michael looks at him funny, like it’s a stupid question. “I kind of figured you wanted me here, seeing as I found the beer in the fridge.” He leans against the counter, the way he always does, like he’s angling his hips forward so it’s the first thing that grabs your attention and Alex swears he blushes. He turns away, not sure why he feels so guilty about this dream. 

It’s his. Who’s to say he can’t have this, at least here?

He pushes himself off the doorframe and wanders in until he’s standing behind Michael, breathing in the smell of him. There’s that shampoo he uses that Alex loves, the faint smell of bacon starting to sizzle, and Alex closes his eyes as he wraps his arms around Michael and buries his face in his neck.

“Hey,” Michael murmurs, turning enough to cup Alex’s cheek. “What’s going on?”

“I missed you.”

“I never went away.”

He did, though, because he’s a criminal and Alex can’t _be_ with him. At least, he can’t be with him in the waking world, but here, it’s different. Right? It’s not like his father can guilt him into not dreaming of Michael.

Feeling daring and desperate, Alex shifts so he can turn off the stove, take the bottle of beer out of Michael’s hand, and tangle his fingers in the apron’s strings, tugging him back towards the bedroom. The smile on Michael’s face is a lazy thing that starts to grow smugger, but Alex doesn’t really care if he’s feeling satisfied about what’s about to happen.

The dream lasts all through the morning. They fuck for hours, eat omelettes naked in bed while the television plays old movies, Michael’s fingers absently sliding over Alex’s leg, massaging the exact place it aches, like somehow, he knows without Alex having to tell him where the pain is. It’s _perfect_ , to the point that it feels like he’s lucid dreaming.

He’s getting dressed in the dream when he wakes to morning sunlight spilling into his room and the start of the day looms ahead of him. Somehow, he doesn’t think breakfast is going to live up to the one in his head. 

It’s the first dream he has of a life together with Michael.

It’s far from the last.

* * *

Eventually, Alex isn’t sure he can take it anymore.

He’s been dreaming like that for weeks, now, and it never varies. There’s always Michael Guerin, and Alex is with him. It’s so domestic, it hurts. 

It’s not always perfect. He dreams of bickering and real fights, but he also dreams about them spending _hours_ making up. He dreams about Guerin getting a real job, the two of them in a real home, and sometimes, there’s even a dog.

He tries so hard to dream about anything else. He can’t watch cowboy movies, because that reminds him of Guerin. Alien movies are out, given their first kiss. Romantic comedies? God, he shouldn’t even touch that minefield. Eventually, he settles on reading Russian literature, but even that gets him back to Guerin via Max Evans’ association. Sports, he thinks, will be the one thing that will do it. He mainlines football games for a few hours before falling asleep in front of the television on the sofa.

For the first little while of the dream, he actually thinks he’s managed. He’s dreaming and no Michael in sight. It’s a picnic and kids are shrieking nearby as they run, frantically. He can see Isobel and Noah, a child with them that looks nervous. Isobel looks nervous too. 

“Hey,” says Max as he approaches from behind him, and so far, so good – though, where Max Evans is, Michael isn’t far behind. “Where’s Michael?”

At least Alex isn’t naked and late for a test. He tells himself that there are worse dreams he can be having than dreaming about some school playday while someone assumes he knows where Michael is. This is stressful in a completely different way, but Alex forces himself to smile and try and understand why Max thinks he’d know. “Around, I guess? I don’t know, did you check the Wild Pony?”

Max looks at him like he’s crazy, which, to be fair, Alex is starting to think he is. He can’t stop dreaming about Michael and he’s sure it’s going to push him over the edge soon.

“I thought you banned him going there after…”

“After what?” There he is, the man of his dreams. Alex feels the pressure of Michael’s arm around his shoulders, pulling him in for a kiss to the temple. Out of habit, Alex flinches, eyes skirting the party to look for his dad, but he’s not there and no one else seems to care. Honestly, no one even bats an eye. It’s like they don’t exist, and even Max waves them off like a lost cause.

Alex gives Michael a confused laugh. “I don’t get your family sometimes.”

Wait. Why did he say that? The Evans twins aren’t Michael’s family, that doesn’t make sense. He opens his mouth to apologize for overstepping, but he doesn’t actually say anything, because he knows he’s right. Somehow, he has no idea how, but he knows. That sureness came from nowhere, but Alex doesn’t question it, because neither does Michael. It’s a dream. The three of them hang out so often that they might as well be family. 

“Yeah, well, you don’t get to choose who’s left,” Michael says, tugging Alex to turn in his arms.

After so long trying his best to dream of anything else, his stomach lurches to consider that this could end. The sun feels warm on his neck and the school picnic around them feels safe and familiar. With Michael swaying with him, half like a private dance, the breeze lightly pushing his curls back (and is that grey in them? Alex kind of likes that), he can’t believe he tried so hard to avoid this dream.

“Hey,” Michael murmurs. 

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

Oh, _shit_. The panic on his face seems to make Michael worried, but things have suddenly escalated. He’s not saying it back. Does he feel the same? He knows he does, deep down, but it feels like something big will give if he says those words out loud. The longer there’s silence between them, the worse Michael looks, and he pries his arms away from Alex, scoffing as he puts some distance between them.

“Unbelievable,” is what he hears Michael mutter. “Even here.”

Then he’s stormed off and Alex is stuck frozen in place, those three words still on his lips, but he can’t say them. He’s never said them. He doesn’t take his eyes off Michael, but he’s long gone to talk to Max, grabbing something that looks weirdly like a bottle of nail polish remover from his pocket. 

“I love you,” Alex says, like he’s trying out the words. Michael can’t hear him, but saying them makes him realize how much of a weight they’ve been, sitting on his chest. Carrying around that kind of emotional truth is a shitty thing when it’s so much easier to just get it out, especially when he means it. “I love you, Guerin.” It’s close, but it’s not right. “I love you, Michael.”

There it is. 

When he wakes up, the television is playing shitty infomercials, it’s one in the morning, and Alex yanks at the blanket covering him to bury his face in it, trudging to bed where it’s empty and cold and devoid of the one person he wants to find there.

* * *

When he wakes up the next morning, he feels so full of grief that he swears someone has died, but then tendrils of the dream snake through his consciousness and he knows that it’s not something he’s mourning from the past, but a future that seems like it might never happen if he doesn’t do something about it. When he’d drifted off to sleep again, he didn’t go back to the picnic and he’d been in a dreamless sleep, but that first dream is still so firmly _there_ in his mind, like it’s a memory and not a dream.

He closes his eyes and lets himself revel for another few minutes in the sleep-warm memory of Guerin’s arms wrapping around him from behind, making him feel like he’s come home. He only needs a few minutes before he remembers that if he actually does something about it, then he can get it in his waking hours.

As far as he’s come, he’s not so sure he’s ready yet. It’s one thing to have it happen in your dreams where there’s no consequences and your father won’t beat the shit out of you for it. He’s not a kid anymore, though. He’s a decorated airman and if his father did try, Alex could stand up to him. It’s not the violence that’s holding him back, though, but the insidious way Jesse Manes’ words have found roots in his head.

Still, he could have someone. He could have Guerin, and these dreams are showing him how _amazing_ it would be.

Turning over in bed, he reaches out and lets his fingers glide over the iridescent glass he keeps beside him. For a strange and insane moment, he swears, he can hear Guerin’s voice in his head as clear as if he were lying right behind him.

_Alex…?_

Then, his fingers drift from it and his voice is gone.

Alex forces himself to forget about it, going to work and putting all his attention to anything else to get his mind off the fact that he’s looking forward to falling back to sleep, because in his dreams, that’s where he and Guerin can have a life together, because he’s too much of a coward to try and make it work when they’re awake.

* * *

This time in the dream, they’re at the reunion. It’s familiar ground as opposed to the strange future landscapes he’s gotten used to. The picnics, the house they keep returning to (with its ugly yellow curtains and sketches all over the wall, formulas and equations taped to the wall in between framed photos of the both of them), and even the auto shop have become normal.

This, as familiar as it is, seems foreign.

“Isobel could always do this,” Michael says as he stares at Alex, the sound of the band’s music fading as the door closes behind him. “Get inside people’s heads, relive these moments.” Alex can hear them playing Liz’s song in the background, but his attention zeroes in on Michael’s voice. “I was always jealous during those years when you were gone. I would’ve given anything to have time with you again, be able to change it.”

(He’s Michael in these dreams, never Guerin, and Alex doesn’t even realize he’s doing it)

Alex shakes his head, because Michael isn’t making sense. “What are you talking about?”

“Her whole power thing,” Michael goes on, oblivious, “I guess when you’re an alien, you get luck of the draw when it comes to powers. Messing with people’s minds, creeping in on their dreams, I thought maybe that was just an Isobel thing, but maybe someone decided I needed to catch a break.”

He’s advancing like he did on the night of the reunion, but Alex’s heart is beating wildly.

“Wh – what are you talking about? Alien?”

“That’s not what you said at the reunion,” Michael says suspiciously, running both hands through his hair as he clearly starts to panic, like he’s expecting Alex to be following a script about nostalgia. “Shit.”

Before Alex can ask what’s going on, the dream ends abruptly and Alex is startled awake, like someone’s just pulled the plug. 

He feels _guilty_ and startled, a panic settling into his head as he looks around for anything to ground him. That’s when his eye catches the iridescent glass beside his bed, reaching out to touch it. 

All that weird research his father and Jim Valenti talked about when Alex was a kid and they didn’t think he was listening. Now that the word “alien” is in his head, it seems completely normal for this piece to be something alien, but Guerin talked in the dream like he was alien, too. Alex strains to think back to the trailer and he swears he remembers something like this when he’d been looking in the window, a twin piece to the one he’d found. 

Enough is enough. Alex needs answers.

He grabs the piece and wraps it up in a t-shirt, stuffing it in a backpack. He doesn’t bother texting Guerin to let him know that he’s coming, just heads straight to the junkyard to get some answers. It’s early morning, but when he gets there, Guerin is out in the front of his trailer, swigging from a flask, and he doesn’t even seem surprised to see Alex. 

“You here to yell at me about being a criminal and how I need to recant my ways?”

Alex fumbles to get his cane and get over to Guerin’s side. He’d spent the drive over freaking out about seeing him in person, so he didn’t spend much time rehearsing what he was going to say. “You’re an alien?” 

It’s far from worst case scenario, but it’s hardly smooth. What if they really were just dreams? Even though those dreams are the most vivid, most real experiences he’s had since the last time he and Guerin were together, that could just be his overactive imagination trying to get what he’s been missing. 

Maybe if that were his only piece of evidence, he could believe it, but it’s not. Frantically digging through his backpack, he unearths the piece, holding it up and shoving it forward, into Guerin’s face.

“This, you had one of these in your trailer. I could barely make it out, but now that I’ve seen this, I know. It’s alien, too.”

“I should have known,” Guerin says, shaking his head and backing a step away, holding a hand out like he’s…what, afraid that Alex is going to do something? 

It only occurs to Alex belatedly that yeah, Guerin probably is worried. He’s air force, he’s part of the group who have been looking into aliens for decades, and he could think that Alex is here to take him away and dissect him. His stomach turns at the idea, because he could never let anything happen to Guerin. He could never let anything happen to Michael. 

“Does this mean those dreams, that we were sharing them?” The pieces are all starting to fall into place and Alex’s doubts are fading fast. The way Michael acts in those dreams, how he speaks, that’s not someone that you’re dreaming about.

That’s the _person_.

“I theorized that the pieces of the ship were connected, the same as the people inside of it,” Michael admits, still keeping his distance from Alex. “I didn’t know that you had one of the pieces, but if you’ve been touching it, in close proximity, it could have fostered a connection between us.”

Alex wants to insist that there’s been a connection for over ten years, but he’s speechless, his mind carding through the dreams and reliving every moment from a new perspective, now that he knows that hadn’t been his subconscious’ version of Michael, but the man himself.

“So, that’s really been you in those dreams. Not my dream version of you, but _you_.” Michael snorts, shaking his head. “So, you can be with me inside your head, but out here…?” It feels like the area around them is vibrating with anger and Alex glances around to see that it’s not just a feeling.

Most of the metal in the yard is shaking like the faintest earthquake is rattling the ground, but Alex feels steady on his feet. 

“I don’t want to be my father’s voice!”

“What?” The objects stop vibrating, maybe because Michael’s more confused than anything. 

“I’m tired of being the puppet that my father speaks to the world through,” he breathes out. “Every time I look at you, I think about how he hurt you. I think about how he keeps getting in my head and reminding me that you’re a drunk and ….”

“And a criminal,” Michael finishes for him, bitterly. “If you’re here to walk away again, just get out.”

Alex doesn’t move. 

“I…”

Michael glares at him, clearly waiting and wanting for more. Alex closes his eyes tightly and forces himself to think about what he wants so he can vocalize it. “I want to be with you. I don’t want to think that if we were together, you’d still be going to the Pony to get shitfaced and end up in barfights.”

“If they insult you? If they hurt you?”

“Michael,” Alex exhales, hating that he doesn’t hate the thought of Michael getting into dust-ups to defend him. “I don’t want to imagine us together and you being so unhappy with it that you still do all that. That you’d try and get your kicks gambling and drinking and fighting.”

“What about my “side hustle”, huh?” Michael asks, with quotation marks. 

Alex shifts uncomfortably, because he doesn’t like it, not at all. At the same time, it isn’t hurting anyone and the air force did kick Michael off his land and his home, from the job that he’d had earning money. Is it really worth losing Michael completely just because he sells old junk to people in town that need it? His heart feels constricted and tight in his chest, like a vice, and he knows that he’s not willing to give up Michael over _copper wire_. He’s not going to like it, but he thinks he can live with it as long as some of the other things go away.

“Stop getting arrested for barfights,” he says.

“So, get away with it?” Michael quips. 

“No,” Alex responds. “Spend those nights with me, instead.” 

He’s drifting closer, handing out the alien artifact to Michael like a peace offering, watching its colors glimmer like an ocean wave as Michael reaches out to take it. It brings up the other elephant in the room. 

“You’re an alien,” he says. “That’s…new.”

“Actually, it’s really old, but yeah,” Michael agrees warily. “You okay with that part of me?”

It means lying to his father. It means lying to the air force and the whole town. Then again, if Michael is an alien, then he’s already been lying to them for much longer than that. 

“It doesn’t mean you have secret tentacles somewhere?” He’s joking, even if it sounds feeble. 

Michael smirks at him. “Not that I know of. Just the ability to move things with my mind.” The vibrating from earlier starts to make more sense, as Alex watches as a bottle of beer floats in between them, right into Michael’s hand.

“Beer for breakfast?”

It’s an echo of an earlier dream and Alex’s heart is pounding even as he asks. There’s _so much_ left unsaid between them, but he thinks that they’ve managed to clear the most important of the issues. Michael isn’t hiding any secrets and Alex isn’t listening to his father’s voice in his head telling him this is a bad idea. He takes the piece of alien ship out of Michael’s hand and sets it on the nearest table, prying the bottle of beer out of Michael’s hand to put it down, too.

This is both new and old. They’ve done this before, and he’s dreamed it, but as Alex heads to the trailer, he feels Michael grab him by the wrist.

“Hey, are we…? Are we together, then?”

Alex doesn’t think he needs to say anything with words. They’ve been dreaming together for weeks and they know how they feel about each other. He doesn’t want to talk about aliens or barfights or all the things that could go wrong. Right now, he’s good to fixate on the things they can make right. 

He turns and tugs on Michael’s t-shirt to pull him into the trailer. Michael closes the door with a telekinetic slam and Alex doesn’t waste a second before he’s back in Michael’s arms, only this time, he’s not going to wake up from it. 

It turns out that this is like breathing too. The way they move together, Michael’s hands on him, his mouth on his, and the feeling of ecstasy when he comes is just like that steady habit of breath in, and breath out.

Because Alex wants to keep doing it to right up until his dying breath.

* * *

It’s years later when Alex wakes up with Michael’s fingers slowly tracing patterns over his arm, drifting past the small tattoo that matches the one on Michael’s mirroring shoulder. When they’d decided to take that leap, rings just didn’t seem like the way to go, but these tattoos of the constellations – Perseus on Alex’s arm, Lyra on Michael’s – they make sense for them. 

Alex rubs his cheek against his pillow as he rouses himself into waking, letting his eyes slowly open to Michael presses kisses to each star on the tattoo.

“Is this why you wanted to get them?”

“Any excuse to get my mouth on you,” Michael replies, nipping the last star with a biting kiss before he turns and gives himself a little bounce as he collapses back on the bed, stretching out slowly. “You have to work today?” 

“Some of us have to work _every_ weekday.”

“I’d hate to be one of them,” Michael replies, grinning like he isn’t a man in his mid-thirties with a job and a husband and pictures of a dog they’re thinking about adopting. He shifts and shuffles in to curl up against Alex, forcing himself into a position where he’ll get to be the little spoon, yanking Alex’s arm around him as he lets his eyes drift closed.

Something starts to feel strange. It’s not _wrong_ , but it’s odd.

“Michael,” he says, warily. 

“Hmm?” Michael’s clearly trying to fall back asleep. 

“I’ve definitely had this dream.”

Michael opens his eyes and Alex wills himself desperately not to get hard again, because he does have to work and they can’t lounge the day. Well, Michael can, but gainfully self-semi-employed is an occupation that Alex has made his peace with.

“So have I,” Michael agrees, “but usually my hand is on your dick when I have it.”

“I’m serious,” Alex says, pushing Michael back to the bed when he rolls over to clearly start making his dream a reality. “Before everything, a couple years ago, when you and I were sharing dreams, I dreamed this. It wasn’t just the morning. It’s the bed, the house, the tattoos were there, I could feel the connection between us…”

He doesn’t even sound like he believes himself. It’s not the only time it’s happened. He swears, he can remember things in their lives like he’s seen echoes of them, before.

“So maybe we’ve always been connected. Maybe we’re predictable assholes who dreamt up a better life and made it happen,” Michael speaks, and he sounds carefree and easygoing, like he doesn’t give a shit when Alex knows that’s not the case. He always feels too much, never shows enough. “Who cares? We’re together.” 

Alex opens his mouth to protest, because if they were dreaming of _the actual future_ , then what else could the alien technology do? 

At the same time, Maria’s advice comes floating back to him about making home out of a person. He’s _home_ , and maybe those dreams were just the map that led them to this. In a few months, when they watch Noah and Isobel send their son off to play at a school picnic, with Michael’s arms wrapped around Alex from behind, joking about little alien babies and how cute one would look with his curls, he decides it doesn’t matter what those ship materials can do. That’s someone else problem to solve.

It led him here.

That’s all that matters to him.

It led him home.


End file.
